Search results for: Tefillah

To increase the likelihood of school-wide change and ultimately reach a greater number of teachers, PCJE will hold a Tefilah Education Conference for Day School Administrators at the Pearlstone Retreat Center in Reisterstown, MD from June 24-28, 2019. PCJE will host a maximum of 15 school administrators and/or key tefilah leaders best able and empowered to lead the tefilah education change process in their schools.

Ever since the institution of formalized prayer there has been anxiety about the impact of that decision. “When one makes his prayer fixed it is no longer a supplication” (Mishnah Berakhot 4:4). The implications are educational as well as theological. Educating to the formal structures of tefillah functions as an important gateway to socializing the student into an adult community of Jewish prayer, but the more we focus on that important element the more we constrain the individual expression and the internal prayerful experience. In the contemporary educational scene, this dichotomy often expresses itself as a lens of the school’s halakhic orientation. Read more about tefillah, in this issue of Jewish Educational Leadership.

These are questions that I struggle with as an educator, a tefillah leader, and a Jew. As a participant, I hope to be moved by worship experiences. As a leader, I hope to make the experience meaningful. As an educator, I want students to have a positive Jewish experience that inspires them -- to lead, to learn and to live Jewishly. How can we make the time students spend in religious school tefillah meaningful and memorable, and how can it be used to develop relationships and build community? There are elements inherent in a service that do engage children. Children love to talk, to sing, to move, and to listen to stories. If we can frame the tefillah with these concepts, perhaps we can create a more engaging prayer experience. If we can infuse each element of the service with meaning, taking the time to explain and explore what we do and why we do it, we have the potential of making not only religious school tefillah more engaging, but also every service they attend for the rest of their lives.

At the start of the summer vacation, twenty four teachers, spanning grades 2-12, across denominations and from throughout the U.S., participated in the Aleinu Leshabe’ach II: Conference on Tefilah in Jewish Day Schools. The five-day conference, run by the Pardes Center for Jewish Educators (PCJE) with support from the AVI CHAI Foundation, aimed to work with teachers on the front lines who are seeking ways to make tefilah (prayer) more meaningful in their schools.